


Dog Days

by some_nights



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018), Riverdale (TV 2017)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-16
Updated: 2019-01-16
Packaged: 2019-10-11 06:16:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17441504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/some_nights/pseuds/some_nights
Summary: Archie Andrews and Vegas swap bodies - courtesy of the weird sisters.Takes place after 3x08.





	Dog Days

He should have been over the border by now. He’d been wandering in the woods for three days, sleeping on the harsh ground, wrapped only in a thin blanket. Whenever he thought he was past the woods, that he had found the border or at least a village of some kind it was just a clearing followed by more trees. Too many damn trees.  
“I’m sick of trees”, Archie mumbled and Vegas barked. He was glad to have his dog with him. He made the loneliness more bearable.  
“If you weren’t with me, bud, I probably would have lost my mind by now from all these goddamn trees.”  
He smiled down at his loyal companion. Vegas licked his hand shortly and Archie at once felt less hopeless and destitute. The fact was that he was almost out of food. He and his dad had though he’d find some roadside shop or maybe even a town. But a town was nowhere in sight. All there was were the dark trees.  
They’d joked that they could build a lodge together, live off the land. However, Archie alone couldn’t live off the land and he knew that. He’d passed some berry bushes already but with his botanical expertise, he might poison himself. And while his situation was destitute, he didn't want to die. If he had a death wish, he would have stayed in Riverdale.  
The sun was setting again and darkness started to creep into the forest. With the darkness came the fog. This hadn’t been the case on the first night. Back then, it had just been cold and destitute. On the second evening Archie had spent in the woods, however, the rising fig had brought with it an ominous atmosphere that gave Archie chills.  
He should stop for the night. It wasn’t safe to walk in the dark and he didn’t want to unnecessarily waste the batteries in his flashlight.  
Vegas started barking.  
“What is it, boy? Another squirrel?”  
The dog kept barking but stood suspiciously still. As Archie took another step, Vegas growled. Archie stopped and frowned and the barking resumed. Still frowning, Archie looked into the darkness just to discover that it wasn’t all dark. There was a light. Hope flooded him. The light had something strange about it but he didn't care about that. Where there was light there was life - probably even human life.  
He knew his trusted companion was trying to warn him of something but for the moment, Archie couldn’t care. All he cared about was the possibility of finally getting to talk to someone again - someone who could respond with more than just barks. He strove on despite Vegas’s protests and after a while, the dog followed him, whimpering. The closer Archie came to the lightsource, the weirder it seemed. If it were a campfire, it would be flickering, throwing dancing shadows out into the woods. But it didn’t. If it were from a lamp or a sign, it would be still, maybe sometimes buzzing on and off. Instead, the light was neither still nor flickering. Instead, it seemed to pulsate, almost as if it was alive. If Archie had eaten more than one sandwich that day, he would have been afraid. Since he had only eaten one sandwich that day, fear could only knock on the door of his mind and be declined by the hope that, through the light, Archie would find other people. Food.  
The light seemed to dim the closer he got. When he finally reached its source, it was almost gone. Archie found himself at the entrance to a mineshaft. Vegas started growling again. Archie tried to calm him down and eyed the entrance. It seemed out of place here. A cave in the middle of the woods, no roads for miles. Yet, the wooden structure that held everything up seemed trustworthy. _Never go into strange caves, son_ , he heard his father’s voice in his head. Archie turned around, ready to walk away. But just then he realised that, besides light, the mines also emitted warmth. After standing with his face towards the warm mine entrance for a while, the cold night air of the forest seemed even more cutting, more hostile.  
“If you don’t follow me”, Archie said to Vegas. “I will sleep out here. I promise.”  
Vegas whined.  
Archie took a deep breath and walked towards the mine. He was wondering how he could have missed the warmth. He felt Vegas by his side, pressed to his leg, and smiled. No sleeping in the cold for him tonight.

The next morning, Archie was confused. He could swear that there hadn’t been a clearing before the entrance to the mine. When he stepped out, his confusion just grew. What had before been a solitary cave, out of place, was now in a hill. This was what a mine should look like and this was where it should be. His stomach growled. Archie decided that he could think about all the weird stuff later, right now, he needed something to eat. He took his last sandwich out of his backpack. As he ate it, slowly, he knew he needed to find another source of food. Fast. Vegas looked at Archies sandwich with pleading eyes so Archie gave him a quarter of it. Then, when they were both done eating, he got up and got on his way.  
Something was different about the forest. The trees seemed different. Maybe he just hadn’t been paying enough attention before and this was what they’d always looked like. Except that he had seen nothing but trees for three days and these were not the ones he’d stared at for all that time.  
“What’s going on here, buddy?”, he mumbled at his dog. Vegas responded with a whine. Apparently he was as suspicious as Archie of the whole situation.  
Archie heard something crack under his shoe. While that itself wasn’t too unusual, he felt a strange tingle in his leg this time. He looked down and saw what looked like a bird skeleton. Archie gasped and drew back in terror, holding his hand over his mouth. Vegas, after a short sniff, barked and growled at the skeleton and joined Archie. They both looked down on it, Archie leaning against a tree, speechless, Vegas growling by his side.  
This wasn’t the first time Archie had seen an animal corpse. It was the first time, though, that he had stepped onto one and cleanly snapped its head from its neck.  
“Maybe I should… bury it?”, he asked Vegas when he’d calmed down a little.  
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you”, a voice said and Archie almost jumped into the tree.  
Laughs. “You have to be careful in this woods, pretty boy”, another voice continued. Archie looked around for the source of it but saw no one. _I’ve really lost it now_ , he thought.  
It was a third voice that said: “You know what they say about boys who wander alone in Greendale forest.”  
Greendale? That couldn’t be right. Greendale was right next to Riverdale and his dad had driven him towards the border which was miles into the other direction. He couldn’t have started in the woods near canada and somehow ended up near Greendale, could he?  
“I think it is confused”, the first speaker said mockingly.  
“I think it is scared”, the second one replied.  
“Maybe it is a gift our Dark Lord has given us”, the third one drawled.  
Both the first and the second speaker were right. Archie was confused. And scared. He didn’t dare to move from the tree in fear it would expose his back.  
Again, there was laughter around him but no matter how much he craned his neck, he couldn’t see anyone. Just trees, Vegas and the bird corpse. For that was what it looked like now. No longer just bones but a rotting little Robin, maggots and worms eating away at its flesh. Its neck was broken.  
“Look what you did”, one of the voices said.  
“Just stepped on this little protector.”  
“I’m sure _she_ placed it there. You know how attached she is to mortals.”  
“Well, now the spell is broken.”  
“Alright sisters”, the first voice said, clearer than ever before. “Let’s have some fun.”  
Before Archie, there suddenly appeared three stunning young women. Their dresses reminded him a little of what the girls up at the Sisters of Quiet Mercy wore, just in black and much better fitting. If he was to meet his end, at least it was at the hands of three of the most beautiful girls he’d ever seen. And that he would meet his end at the hands of these three he was sure of. They looked at him not as a person but as prey. Scanning him with their eyes, surveying every curve of his body. Not with lust but with something else. He wasn’t as scared as he had been just seconds ago when they’d just been voices and laughter. Now that he saw these three smiling girls, he knew what was coming. Or at least he knew where it came from. The known enemy was much less frightening than the unknown one. Archie’d made his peace with it. He smiled, closed his eyes and thought of Veronica.

“Hey kid, wake up. You either work or piss off”, a voice said. Archie groaned. _Wake up_. It had all just been a dream. One that had felt very realistic but a dream nonetheless. He stretched and heard Vegas make the sound he always made when he yawned. Archie slowly opened his eyes. He saw a man roughly shaking a teenage boy.  
“Hey”, Archie said. Or rather: Attempted to say. For what left his mouth weren’t words. It was a bark. The man turned to him and gave Archie a better view of the kid. It was as if he was looking in a mirror. Only that it wasn’t because he’d never seen his face look like that. And there was no doubt that it was his face. Even though his hair looked more green than red, it was still his hair. Those were his dark eyebrows, his nose, his lips. Archie was looking at himself. No, not himself because he was not… in there. He was looking at his own body, half sitting up against the wall, slumped together. Archie looked down and yelped which resulted in another bark. He didn’t know what he’d expected to see. But he definitely hadn’t expected two very familiar paws from a very unfamiliar perspective. These were Vegas’s paws. He raised one of them and watched it lift from the floor. He was in Vegas’s body. But how? His contemplation was cut short by a sharp pain in his side when the man kicked him out of the mine - literally. Archie painfully landed on the floor and let out a whine.  
The man looked down and spat on him.  
“Fucking homeless kids with their damn dogs.”  
Then, he turned back to Archie’s body and resumed shaking it.  
“Hey! Kid! Wake up or I’ll kick you like I just kicked your dog!”  
For a moment, Archie was pretty sure his body wouldn't wake up. That he was trapped in the body of his dog while his body was uninhabited, dead. But then, his body opened its eyes. They darted around, scared, confused.  
“Are you high or something?”, the man asked when Archie’s body started sniffing the air.  
Could it be…? “Vegas!”, Archie barked and his body’s head turned around. “Come here, boy!”  
“Tell your fucking dog to shut up!”, the mineworker said to Archie’s body. To Vegas. Because as soon as Archie had given the command, his body got up - on all fours at least - and started walking towards him. The mineworker grumbled something Archie didn’t quite catch, he was too concentrated on thinking what he should do next. First, he obviously had to leave the mine. He walked a few steps. It felt weird, very weird. No wonder Vegas was still trying to maneuver his human body on all fours. This must be even stranger for him. Archie took another step and then another and walked until he could no longer smell the stench of the mine. All the while, he looked back over his shoulder to make sure that his body - Vegas - was still following him. Luckily, he was. When the mine was far enough away not to be smelled anymore, Archie stopped.  
“Vegas?”, he barked. His body nodded. Of course, whatever was inhabiting his body right now could also just be lying. But somehow Archie felt it was his dog. There was a special bond between a dog and its owner, a bond that could not be broken by something as simple as body switch. Archie trodded over towards Vegas and encouragingly licked his face. He couldn’t imagine how scared his dog must be. Vegas was hesitant at first but then he awkwardly raised a hand and started petting Archie. They sat like this until Vegas’s stomach grumbled.  
They’d eaten the last sandwich yesterday. (With these weird circumstances, Archie no longer believed the events with the three weird women to be a dream. They had done this to him, somehow.) He remembered that, while taunting him, the girls had mentioned Greendale. If he was truly in Greendale forest, the town couldn’t be that far. And now, with his superior nose, he could just follow a trustworthy smell. He encouragingly poked Vegas against the cheek with said nose. Vegas got up on Archie’s hands and feet again. Archie poked his forehead with the dog nose. “Two legs”, he barked. Vegas looked at him with doubt in his eyes but after an encouraging lick, he tried getting up. It looked quite wobbly but he didn’t fall down. Archie wagged his tail. He walked a few steps and looked back. Vegas slowly put one foot in front of the other one, arms stretched out to the sides. It seemed to work. And since Greendale wasn’t in sight yet, Vegas still had time to practice before they would be among people.  
Archie sniffed around to find a trail he could follow. The smells were almost overwhelming. They drew a clear picture in his head, filled the world with colours Archie had never seen before. Which was good because through a dog’s eyes alone, the world was way less colourful. With the smells, however, it was more distinct again. More defined.  
There were many, some were from animals who had long moved on, some from people who had just walked here. There were some markings in the area that told Archie that he wasn’t welcome here. One smell seemed vaguely familiar. He couldn’t quite place it but it made him feel secure and at home. He decided to follow that one.  
As he was trotting through the forest, Vegas beside him, Archie thought how he’d technically been lucky to end up in Greendale. However he’d come here, it was quite unlikely that Hiram would be able to track him. Of course there was always the danger of someone from Riverdale taking a trip here and recognising him. But for now, Greendale was as safe as any other place, maybe even safer because Hiram truly wouldn’t find him here.  
The smells changed before the scenery did. Cars. Their stench cut into the forest air, almost blocking out all other smells at first. Archie asked himself how Vegas could live like this. Then he saw it. Greendale. He was pretty sure if he’d still been in his own body, he would have fallen onto his knees and wept. Finally. Civilisation. People. And he was stuck as a dog while his body was inhibited by the dog who’s body he was inhibiting. Definitely less than ideal.

**Author's Note:**

> Well. This sure is something. I have a plan for what happens next but I haven't written it yet so whether I'll ever actually finish this fanfiction for a show I've never even watched is still up in the air.  
> As always, you can find me on [tumblr](http://writtelings.tumblr.com/). Comments and kudos are very much appreciated.


End file.
